- At least eight policemen were injured Sunday and nine
settler demonstrators were arrested as rightist protesters clashed with
security forces trying to dislodge them from the illegal Havat Gilad outpost
near the West Bank city of Nablus.
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- Demonstrators set fire to a weed field near the outpost,
burned tires, and attacked and put out of commission a crane which was
to be used to dismantle the outpost.
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- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Sunday strongly condemned
the demonstrators' resort to violence against security forces. "Any
attack against the IDF, the security forces or the police, is an attack
on the rule of law," Sharon said in remarks broadcast on Israel Radio.
"This must be condemned in the strongest terms, and must not be allowed
to take place."
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- Sharon, who as defense minister in 1982 presided over
Israel's only mass evacuation of settlements, the dismantling of northern
Sinai enclaves under the terms of a peace treaty with Egypt, added that
"Protest,by stones and objects thrown at them, and ten settlers were
injured during the forced evacuation.
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- The clashes sparked an exchange of verbal venom extraordinary
even for the acrid discourse of left-right public debate. Infrastructure
Minister Effie Eitam, chairman of the settler-dominated National Religious
Party, accused Ben-Eliezer of deceit, stupidity and cowardice for having
allowed troops to be transported on the Sabbath in order to evacuate the
outpost.
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- "There has been cabinet decision on this, and there
is no [cabinet] backing for evacuating the outposts. It is a case of Fuad
bringing the Labor Party primaries into the camps of the army, into the
government, to the soldiers," Eitam said, adding that the defense
minister had with "unbearable cynicism" turned his intra-party
rivals into a means of legitimizing a "security operation" on
the Sabbath.
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- For his part, the prime minister voiced "deep sorrow,
in my name and on behalf of the entire cabinet, for the mass, superfluous
violatiw requires that Jews refrain from all Sabbath travel unless obligated
by pikuah nefesh, the commandment to save human life, even if the act involves
religious transgressions.
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- "I have asked the Chief of Staff to investigate
this [Sabbath travel] matter, to see how this happened," Ben-Eliezer
said. "But, as citizens, we must not forget for a second that the
settlers are located in areas of pikuah nefesh, which takes precedence
over [the laws of] the Shabbat - and that the soldiers spend their own
holidays and Shabatot" in defending them.
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- Eitam charged that in ordering the removal by force,
Ben-Eliezer had broken an agreement with the protesters occupying the site,
under which they would leave voluntarily. "This morning I heard him
saying 'I didn't give the order.' Is he that stupid, as well, not to have
understood that an operation beginning on Saturday night and requiring
masses of soldiers, will not cause a mass violation of the Sabbath?
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- "This is a form of cowardice diluto go clash head-on
with IDF soldiers.
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- "I won't lend a hand to this, and will oppose this
all the way."
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- Responding to Eitam's scathing criticism of Ben-Eliezer,
Labor MK Haim Ramon, one of the defense minister's main rivals for the
party chairmanship, urged that Eitam himself be sacked:
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- "The defense minister should demand that the prime
minister get rid of Effie Eitam, the defender of lawbreakers, who is himself
an integral part of them, a group of semi-criminal elements which is trying
to force its political doctrine onto an democratically elected government."
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- The Havat Gilad enclave had been reclaimed by settlers
after troops cleared the site earlier in the week.
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- Security forces tried several times to calm the situation.
The Zar family, for whose son Gilad the outpost was named, arrived in an
effort to prevent a confrontation between settlers and troops. Contacts
between settler leaders and the Defense Ministry also failed to prevent
the violence.
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- Gilad Zar, a the agricultural structures at Havat Gilad,
after previously removing the settlers' caravans.
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- Some 1,000 settlers and demonstrators left the outpost
of their own accord at the end of a day of protests over the planned evacuation
of the site. But a small group stayed, vowing never to leave the hilltop.
They were joined by hundreds more on Friday.
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- http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=
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